Re:Activism Twin Cities

Come out & play!

We’re excited about bringing it here, and think it’s a good fit for the Twin Cities, for several reasons:

1. As we approach the one-year anniversary of the RNC, it offers an interesting – and hopefully fun and empowering – way to commemorate the events of last September before they’re shunted down the collective memory hole;
2. The focus on text-messaging and, perhaps, other emerging technologies that played such a primary role during the RNC can be metaphorically invoked in the way the game is played;
3. By placing the RNC and its attendant repression within the context of historical – and ongoing – local struggles, we can create for ourselves an opportunity to draw important parallels and bring these to the front of public discourse. We’d argue that for many, if not most, RNC activists, the point has always been that state oppression is the norm, that police brutality is systemic, that the sanctioned violence experienced by activists on the streets last September was simply a microcosm of the daily violence experienced by diverse communities every single day, and so on: Re:Activism, in whatever form we collectively shape it, contains within it a way to make these connections between struggles explicit, a way for us to learn about each other and further strengthen our solidarity; and
4. It’s probably a good excuse to bike around town, make noise, and generally disrupt business-as-usual, in a particularly theatrical fashion.

So, if you’re interested in playing, keep yr eyes on this page for details over the next week.

And we still need all kinds of help getting it off the ground, so if you’re one of those organiz-y types, hit us up: reactivismtwincities@gmail.com

We want a bunch of voices, a bunch of perspectives, and anyone interested in the history of radical struggle in Minnesota to be involved!

Facebook group here. Join us!

 

Transphobic tampon shilling

Aeryn over at Every Body Is A Modified Body provides a link to this bewilderingly insulting and simply bewildering Tampax ad campaign cum “high-concept” multimedia clusterfuck. Pretend 16-year-old Zack’s “profile” sets the stage:

Basically, Zack is a normal 16-year old guy. Except for the fact that one morning he woke up a little bit more like a girl.

That is, he seems to have “misplaced” his penis and found a vagina in its stead. The site includes videos, headscratch-worthy “blog entries” from Zack about the trials and tribulations of his new and utterly body-determined gender, and more. All of this to sell tampons, apparently.

And it somehow manages to get worse, a downward spiral into disturbing cliche, thinly-veiled patriarchal anxiety, and total incoherence that Aeryn chronicles astutely. In fact, just go read his site now for more.

 

Bruno

I just got back and haven’t really had time to process the latest Sacha Baron Cohen intervention (for lack of a better word). It was … really something.

In the mean time, though, here are some bits I found interesting:

• Anthony Lane in the New Yorker;
• A fascinating post on the controversy in general, stuffed to the brim with pro/con quotes;
• A surprisingly apolitical response from a self-described “gay German;”
• A HuffPo writer reacts, and readers react to their reaction, and others react to the readers’ reactions to the writer’s reaction, because it’s HuffPo.

Anyone else checked this out yet?

Edit: I meant to include Roger Ebert’s review and to mention the fact that the film has apparently been banned in the Ukraine. Kthx.

 

CRASS op-ed

For the record, I’m a co-author. But I still find it worth checking out:

New RNC charges highlight vindictive prosecutorial tactics.

 

Fair is fair!

Schultz speaks the truth.

 

“Gendered animal exploitation”

An interview with the always-inspiring Pattrice Jones titled “animal rights, ecofeminism, and rooster rehab.”

 

“Make Destroy Manarchism –and– Shut the Fuck Up”

An anonymous post on Twin Cities indymedia:

Newsflash (except to most everyone with a vagina): We are acting unacceptably, directly leading to the attrition of valuable, amazing, mostly female-bodied activists in our organizations and networks.

Newsflash: Female-bodied activists and others in our cities are sick of it.  The number of them I know who have stepped back or dropped out from the struggle in the last few weeks directly attribuable to elitist, macho, manarchist bullshit in which we are complicit and from which we (temporarily) benefit are far more than the number of charges we’ve successfully defeated, recruits we’ve gained, and even – even – riots we’ve fought during the same time.  Needless to say – or perhaps, more necessary to say than we should’ve thought: this is not how to sustain anything.

Newsflash: This is a problem that men must take the lead in addressing. It is our responsibility, and it must be done immediately (barring that, yesterday would be nice).

Perhaps you still itch to attack, attack, attack?  Good.  We need attack, we really do.  But if your arsenal only contains slingshots and rocks – and therefore your targets are presumably limited to that which can be broken with the same – don’t be surprised when I get the fuck out of the way.   Being around you isn’t safe and I don’t consent to your rhetoric or your attack.  On the other hand, if your arsenal also includes warm hugs, an open ear, a closed mouth, a pen and paper, a spatula and dishrag and broom, and a hand capable of knocking on doors and changing a diaper and holding a sign and holding back a man who doesn’t think about what he’s doing – and your targets are the interlocking systems that can be attacked with these and other tools – then I will struggle by your side.

Fucking finally.

 

A quote for a Friday

From Raoul Vaneigem:

“People who talk about revolution and class struggle without referring explicitly to everyday life, without understanding what is subversive about love and what is positive in the refusal of constraints, such people have a corpse in their mouth.”

The Revolution of Everday Life (wiki link; full text)

 

Thursday night march for queer women and allies

And with every bit of good news I think to post (like the RNC-related court victories below), some bad.

A woman walking home in the Uptown neighborhood of Minneapolis was beaten unconscious by two men after they verbally berated her for being a “fucking dyke.” There has been some amount of shock at this in the press, as Uptown — if not exactly a queer haven — is still an affluent, yuppiesh sort of spot. Thus, the thinking apparently goes, such things don’t transpire there.

I won’t really comment on the validity of that thinking with regard to Uptown, but I’m certain such things happen pretty much constantly and pretty much everywhere. Individuals and communities are targeted throughout our fair city, just like everywhere else, and expressions of regional (or neighborhood-based) shock don’t offer much in terms of resistance.

So … to the streets. See the rest of you allies there.

 

“The failings of us all”

Ta-Nehisi Coates on “Prop 8 and blaming the blacks.” (via, of all places, sullivan. I wonder if Dan Savage is still paying attention, hi-larious Colbert sorta, kinda mea culpas notwithstanding.)

Update: Oh, wait, haha, nevermind. Tricky as hell, that guy.